


i should've carried us home

by juggyjones



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Best Friends, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Minor Finn Collins/Clarke Griffin, Minor Finn Collins/Raven Reyes, Minor Octavia Blake/Lincoln, Sad with a Happy Ending, it's absolutely a bellarke fic don't worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 11:50:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14810810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juggyjones/pseuds/juggyjones
Summary: What makes Bellamy finally realize he loves his best friend is the weight of Echo's love.





	i should've carried us home

**Author's Note:**

> it starts off with becho, but it's all for the purpose of bellarke (just like in the show, cough cough)

Bellamy Blake is in love with Echo. It’s an unexpected love, something no one could've foreseen. It’s wild kisses and late nights spent making out when they should be sleeping, getting energy for work next morning.

Almost three years into the relationship—six years since Echo has joined his friendship group—Bellamy is lying in their bed after such night, mouth still hot and wet from her kisses. She’s lying next to him, asleep, curled around their duvet. It’s a warm night and he likes the feeling of late night’s breeze on his body.

He doesn’t usually take this long to fall asleep. At first, he blames the temperature in the bedroom and sets the thermostat right. When it doesn’t work, he opens the window.

That doesn’t work, either.

Now, he just lays in the bed, wide awake with a heavy burden on his chest.

His mind goes back to the first time Echo tells him she loves him. It’s a rainy day and they’re at Lincoln’s apartment, with Clarke, Octavia, and Lincoln preparing dinner in the kitchen. Echo and Bellamy are sitting in the living room and they’re doing nothing, just waiting.

Bellamy remembers how he feels his heart beating to the thumping of the rain on Lincoln’s broad windows, Echo curled into his chest.

He remembers stroking her hair and placing a kiss on the top of her head. He’s thinking about the dinner, about one of the three messing up, knowing it would most likely be Clarke. She’s not used to the couple’s way of dealing with things, and especially not cooking.

He feels the moment when she’s about to say it. At first, he doesn’t think he hears her well, but her fingers linger underneath his jaw and her eyes are closed. She’s vulnerable, for and to him, and he kisses her.

It takes him nearly a month to say it back.

At this moment, with Echo next to him, he wonders where they went wrong. At this moment, he knows that how he feels about her isn’t the way she wants him to.

The next moment his mind takes him to is when Echo proposes they live together, on a rainy day in August, a little over two years into their relationship.

They’ve just gone back to his place from a double date with Clarke and Finn. Bellamy remembers not liking something about the guy, and talking about that the whole way home.

“He’s not the right guy for her,” he says.

“She’s a big girl,” Echo says. “She can decide for herself. You don’t need to look after her.”

“She’s my best friend.” In the moment, that explains everything.

He remembers being pissed about the little things about Finn and every time Echo says he’s overreacting, he pulls the best friend card. Sometimes, it’s the she’s-like-a-sister-to-me card, too.

He doesn’t connect her suggestion of moving in together to this, at the time. Now he sees the jealousy in her eyes when he talks about Finn, and some distinct fire in her kiss moments before she pops the question. His mind, burdened with the fear his best friend is going to have her heart crushed by a douche, says yes without a second thought.

He knows, now.

He gets out of bed and drinks a glass of water. It’s cold and refreshing and when he looks at Echo, he hopes she would make him feel the same.

She doesn’t.

He loves her, he knows that. But he doesn’t know if he’s in love with her, anymore.

Or if he’s ever been.

He remembers their fights. They’re never about big things, but the one time they are, he leaves their apartment, only months before this moment. He doesn’t even need to think about where he’ll go.

Clarke opens the door with a bottle of beer and forces it into his hand.

“Drink,” she says, “you’ll feel better.”

He listens. They sit at the couch and he sees her desk light is on, even at nearly midnight, and her laptop is open on a medical journal and there are notes and printed papers all over her desk, and the coffee table, and on the counter.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

She gives him a long look. He sees her hair is supposed to be in a braid, but the only reason he knows that is because there’s a headband at the very bottom of it. Her eyes are red and tired and she’s wearing a sweater and sweatpants he never sees her wear.

She chugs what’s left of her beer, goes get another bottle, and drinks some from it. “Finn’s girlfriend called.”

Her boyfriend’s girlfriend. “Wanna talk about it?”

“No.” She nods at him. “What about you?”

It’s his turn to drink. “Echo and I have been fighting for days.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

She raises her beer. “Cheers,” she says. Bellamy touches it with his own. “To the sad lovers who don’t want to talk.”

Bellamy echoes her words.

They drink and Clarke goes back to keeping her sanity intact with medical work for her next shift, or just exploring and learning, and Bellamy checks his presentations for his class tomorrow.

It’s a habit. THey both drown themselves in work when they have no words to say.

At nearly three in the morning, Clarke walks up to him with another bottle of beer. “Wanna talk about it now?”

He does, and so does she.

By the time they’re both finished, it’s nearing six and neither of them has slept anything. So they both call in sick, Bellamy goes home to talk to Echo and Clarke goes on a lunch with Finn’s girlfriend, Raven.

He looks at Echo now, and wonders if they’d even be where they are now if he didn’t have Clarke.

A part of him feels immense guilt. The heavy burden gets heavier as he thinks about him and Echo and what it took for them to get to this point, and he realizes things he wishes he didn’t.

He thinks of the day they’ve had. Echo, waking him on a lazy Sunday morning with breakfast in bed. Soft kisses when he’s finished, and cuddling until it’s almost eleven and they really need to get out of bed.

Instead of lunching at home, she proposes they make a picnic, so they do.

He likes seeing her this breezy, happy. He loves the look in her eyes when she looks at him and knows she’d do whatever it takes to make him happy.

They go to a park. It’s not excessively romantic or excessively rich because he’s a college assistant professor and she’s a guard at a bank and they haven’t really got the money to afford something extravagant.

She brings music. She dances. Bellamy enjoys, but doesn’t participate.

When they come back, rain welcomes them at the doorway. He gives her a kiss under it. In the bed, they continue what they were doing and now she’s asleep and he’s wondering if he’s ever truly loved her the way she deserves to be loved.

He’s running out of love, and he cannot bear the weight of hers.

When she wakes in the morning, he hasn’t slept. They talk for hours and Bellamy gives her an explanation he deserves, and when she cries, the weight begins choking him.

He cries, too, because he’s not the man she deserves.

His heart belongs to someone else. It has, all this time. He makes a joke all the rains about their happiest moments should’ve been a sign.

They part ways amicably as it is. Bellamy’s going to need to look for an apartment as this is primarily hers, and he packs his stuff and crashes at Lincoln and Octavia’s.

He doesn’t tell anyone what happened.

He eats and sleeps and does his work and does his work and does his work and doesn’t sleep. Clarke is busy with her own life and Lincoln has his art and martial arts lessons and Octavia has a bike and police training and Jasper and Monty have their chemical activities and Harper and Monroe and Fox are on a vacation and Raven is on a seminar and Bellamy is alone.

So, he drinks. He thinks about Clarke and how he should’ve known it.

Octavia finds him drunk, dressed in the clothes from two days ago when he arrives home on a Monday morning, claiming he’s been in Las Vegas.

He doesn’t have a class that day. When he wakes up, at nearly midnight, he vomits and vomits and vomits until he’s sure he has no intestines left. Lincoln is by his side and he scolds him for treating himself like this, and makes him promise he’ll talk to Clarke.

“There’s only so much work to do,” he says.

Bellamy knows he’s referring to his habit. And he’s right, because Bellamy’s done all that had to be done and researched all he could and nothing even makes him happy anymore.

He gives Clarke a call later this week, and she tells him to come over.

It’s been nearly a month since he’s last seen her. It’s been nearly three weeks since he broke up with Echo.

This time, he says it at the door. “I broke up with Echo.”

Clarke, as always when she senses something bad happened, gives him a beer.

He puts it away.

“Clarke.” It’s a plea.

She lets him in and he sits on the couch and she sits next to him.

He says, “I love you.”

She smiles. “You’re saying this only because you’re hurting.”

“I broke up with her because I didn’t love her. And I couldn’t, because I love you.”

She’s quiet.

“You don’t have to say it back,” he says. “You don’t have to love me back. I just needed you to know it. I’ve been keeping it from you too long, denying it even longer.”

“Bellamy,” she whispers.

“I know,” he replies.

“No.” She shakes her head. “I thought you were going to propose to her.”

“I never thought about proposing to her.” He never saw her as his everything; as his wife.

“I thought you were happy.”

“I was. Just not the way I should be in a relationship. I couldn’t. Not with her.” He knows she’ll read between the lines.

“Bellamy,” she whispers again.

He closes his eyes. Tries to savour the moment, because he knows that whatever happens next, everything changes.

He doesn’t have Echo. He doesn’t know what will happen with Clarke. He doesn’t have a place to live, he doesn’t have a best friend.

He should’ve thought this through.

Somewhere, deep, guilt starts blubbering.

Then he realizes why he couldn’t let Echo go – because she offered stability. She offered something he could rely on at every time of the day, a safe life he’s always thought he wants for himself. Because he knew her love and loyalty would never waver.

Loving Clarke is like jumping into an ocean without knowing how deep it is, what animals are in there, what kinds of currents moved the waters, or if you can swim.

It’s a risk he’s willing to take.

When he opens his eyes, he sees her cheeks glistening and her eyes red.

He takes the risk. He kisses her.

When she kisses him back, and he carresses her cheeks, wiping away the tears, he knows this is what he’s always wanted.

Not stability. Not certainty.

Deep, weightless love.

He feels Clarke’s words on his own lips.

“I’ve always loved you, too.”


End file.
